“Where are the makeup people and hairdressers when a girl needs them?”
“You wear your own clothes and do your own makeup. That’s why they call it reality TV.”
“Yeah, well. As for makeup, I was lucky to fit blusher, mascara and lip gloss in my pack. But my hair...” Late in the afternoon, the wind had come up and a light rain had fallen. Her hair was no longer smooth and straight. “Ugh. I have no words.”
“Your curls came back. I like ’em.” She felt his hand on her head, a light caress and then gone. “Springy.”
Warmth slid through her at his touch. And not only his touch. Sometimes he said the sweetest things. “I’m braiding it tomorrow. In fact...” She sat up and reached for her pack.
“What are you up to now?”
“I’d better braid it now or it will be nothing but tangles by the morning.”
“In the dark?”
“Piece of cake.” She felt for her comb, brush and a hair elastic and began brushing it in sections, working out the snarls.
He shifted in his sleeping bag, rolling over to his back. She could see him well enough to watch him put his hands behind his head. “What do you think about Roberta and Steve?”
She switched to her comb to ease out a bad tangle. “I have to say, the way she looks at him...”
A low chuckle from Trav. “And the way he looks at her. Pow. That’s attraction.”
Though he probably couldn’t see her do it, Brenna shook her head. “Roberta’s divorce just became final. It was really bad, she said. That bastard destroyed her. She loved him, and he just traded her in like a car with too many miles on it. She told me she’s swearing off men forever.”
“But Steve’s a great guy.”
“Trav, get real. She lives in California, he lives in Texas. She’s forty-five, he’s thirty. And didn’t I just tell you she’s swearing off men forever?”
“Some barriers are just made to be broken.”
She winced as she forced her comb through another tangle. Really, maybe Travis was right. Up to a point, anyway. “Hmm. Well, on second thought, maybe a fling would be good for both of them.”
“Good for their game, too.” Meaning their story within the show.
To succeed on a reality show, you not only had to come out ahead in the challenges, you needed a strong emotional game so viewers would root for you. Or love to hate you. After all, good drama needed bad guys as well as good ones.
Travis added way too casually, “And speaking of the game, Summer came after me again while I was hauling rocks.”
Brenna felt a little stab of something unpleasant—a certain tightness in her belly. She refused to call it jealousy. “Before or after you and I talked alone?”
“After.”
Brenna started braiding swiftly, tugging the sections of her hair harder than she needed to, hard enough that it hurt a little. “Came after you how?”
“I was working a boulder free of the rock slide. She came up behind me and slapped my ass.”
“What in the—You’re kidding.”
“Nope. When I told her to knock it off, she laughed and took hold of my arm. Caught me off balance and I ended up practically falling on top of her. I grabbed her to steady her...”
The silence in the tent seemed to echo. Outside, very distinctly, Brenna heard the lonely hoot of an owl. She prompted, “And?”
He made a slight throat-clearing sound. “Brenna, you know that it’s the story that counts and it’s our job to play it and play it good. That’s all she’s doing, playing her part.”
“And what are you doing, Trav?” She slipped the hair elastic off her wrist and wrapped it three times around the end of her braid, giving it a final snap for good measure.
“Bren—”
“That was wrong, what she did, slapping you like that. Why are you defending her?” She shoved her comb and brush back into her pack.
“Why are you so pissed off all of a sudden?” he demanded. Unfortunately, it was a very good question. One she wasn’t going answer—not even to herself. He added, “All I care about is keeping us strong in the game.”
The game. Right this minute, she hated the damn game. And that was kind of scary, given that this whole thing was a game—one that she really did want to win, one that had only just begun.
“I’m going to ask you one more time, Travis. You grabbed her to steady her. What happened next?”
Another silence. Somewhere out in the night, that lonely owl hooted.
“She kind of...toppled against me.”
“She toppled?”
“Yeah.”
“And then?”
“And then, out of nowhere, she grabbed me around the neck and smashed her mouth on mine.”
Chapter Seven
“You kissed her,” Bren accused in a tiny whisper.
Travis felt like the run-down heel on an old, dirty boot—disreputable and in need of immediate replacement. Kissing Summer had been nothing like kissing Bren. With Bren, he was sorely tempted. With Summer, it was...a calculated transaction. Part of the game.
He opened his mouth to say that of course he hadn’t kissed the woman. She’d kissed him, and he’d pulled away immediately. “I...” The lie got stuck in his throat, and the truth just slid around it and escaped. “I hesitated. I didn’t kiss her back, but for a second or two, when she jumped at me, I didn’t push her away, either.”
“Why not?” Her whisper was soft, carefully controlled. But she wasn’t happy with him. Her disappointment had weight that dragged on his heart. “Are you going to throw me over for Summer, Trav? Is that your game now?”
“Of course not—but yeah, I was thinking of the game. I was running through my options. Trying to decide what the best move would be. To let it go on a moment for the drama, or to push her away fast and remind her that I’m engaged.”
“Oh, great.” Meaning it seriously wasn’t. “Now I get to play the jilted fiancée. Everybody back home can watch you mess me over on network TV.” She zipped her pack, the sound sharp and furious.
“Of course I’m not jilting you. My alliance is with you.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I think it’s crap what you did, Trav. I think playing Summer’s game is the cheap way to go.” That hurt. It hurt bad. And she wasn’t done yet. “We’re supposed to be partners.”
“We are partners.”
“And yet you think it’s a good idea to run around behind my back with another woman.”
“What are you talking about? It was a couple of seconds with her mouth on mine. Nobody was running around. And I’m telling you what happened. How is that behind your back?”
“What about our Great Roundup wedding? Does the game require that I marry a cheater in front of the world?”
“Of course not.”
“If you say ‘of course not’ one more time, I’m going to scream.”
He had the most terrible feeling—that he was losing her. Which made no sense. He’d never even had her, and he never would.
“Bren, I swear to you, it was just a split second that I let her kiss me, and then I took her by the shoulders and pushed her away. I told her to back off, that I was engaged and in love with my fiancée and she should try looking for a guy who might actually be interested.”
A full ten seconds passed as she absorbed that information. “At least you said that,” she gave out grudgingly at last. “Finally.”
“I’m not messing around on you, Bren. I would never do that.”
“Oh, come on. You’ve spent your whole life messing around.”
Now he was the one letting the silence stretch out. What she said was the truth, as far as it went. So why did
it wound him to hear her whispering it at him in the dark?
He answered her honestly. “Well, I think that depends on your definition of messing around. Have I spent time with a lot of different women? Yes. Have I ever cheated? Never. And I never tried to make time with somebody else’s girl. I may be the troublesome Dalton who never settled down, but I am a Dalton, and a Dalton doesn’t cheat.”
She didn’t say anything. Not for a really long time. Instead, she slid down into her sleeping bag and settled on her side with a long sigh. At least she was facing him. He decided to take that as a good sign.
Then she asked, her whisper softer than ever, “What did Summer do next?”
He didn’t want to tell her. But he’d stuck to the painful truth so far. It seemed pretty pointless to start lying now. “She said she’d be waiting when I changed my mind. And then she picked up the armful of sticks she’d gathered and headed for camp.”
“I can think of several unattractive names to call Summer Knight.”
“It’s the game they handed her. She plays it or she’s out.”
“If I were her, I would come up with a better game.”
“I have no doubt.” He wanted to reach over, brush her shoulder, stroke her hair. But right now, he didn’t dare. He kept his hands to himself.
“Trav?”
“Hmm?”
“Did Roger pull you out for an OTF after Summer kissed you?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you say?”
“I said that she had come after me, that it shocked the hell out of me when she kissed me, that I had zero interest in Summer Knight, that I had never led her on and never would. And that you were the only woman for me.”
He seemed to have trouble breathing until she finally spoke. “Well, all right.” And then she said, “If you do change your mind about how you want to play things—”
“I won’t.” He said it louder than he should have. And he meant it, absolutely.
“I was only going to say that I would really appreciate it if you’d let me know first.”
“You’re right. We’re a team. I screwed up and I’m sorry. She kissed me and I started calculating options—but I swear all I did was hesitate. I didn’t kiss her back.”
“She’ll consider your hesitation proof that she’s making headway with you.”
“She’s not.”
“Be prepared for her to come after you again.”
“Next time—if there is a next time—she won’t catch me off guard. And I won’t hesitate. I’ll tell her to get lost in no uncertain terms.”
* * *
In the morning, after eggs and bacon cooked over the campfire, the first major challenge began. The last of the season’s calves, born a couple of months before, needed branding and vaccinating. It was to be a humane procedure, Jasper announced.
“Here on the High Lonesome, dehorning is done shortly after birth, as is the castration of male calves.” Jasper granted them all a wide, cheerful smile that was distinctly at odds with his gruesome subject. “You won’t be dealing with either procedure in this challenge.” Made total sense to Brenna. Dehorning was painful for the animal and best done right after birth. As for neutering, no matter how humanely that job was done, it wouldn’t make for pretty TV, and the calf wouldn’t enjoy it, either.
Jasper kept talking. “And instead of the hot-iron method, we’ll be freeze branding, which causes only a momentary sensation of extreme cold and no physical harm or scarring. The hair is frozen off and grows back a lighter color, so the brand is clearly visible from across an open pasture.” Once he explained all that, he added, “Before you get started, you’ll need to choose your boss.”
They voted on that. Fred Franklin, the twins’ dad, won the vote. In his late forties, with a steady, confident manner, Fred had a ranch near Buffalo, Wyoming. He knew how to run a branding crew.
Most modern ranchers used four-wheelers to gather the calves and a chute to run them through, with a calf table at the end to hold them in place for the brand.
Not on The Great Roundup. They went at it old-school, on horseback.
The gathering and separating of calves from their mamas took forever.
There were reasons. Most of the contestants had experience herding cattle on horseback, but usually it was a job you did on a horse you knew. For the show, they had to use the horses they were given. Brenna got lucky with a great little sorrel mare named Ladygirl. Ladygirl was quick and agile. She would have made a fine barrel horse. Not only did she have the right conformation for a barrel racer, Ladygirl was eager to please and smart, too. That mare had the will to win.
But some of the other High Lonesome horses were understandably skeptical of the strangers riding them. They balked and got fractious. And more than one of the contestants took advantage of the situation, stealing any opportunity to spook another rider’s mount.
With filming going on the whole time, cameramen got in the way. Locke kept hollering, “Cut!” so that he could move his minions into position to get a better angle on this or that shot.
Plus, whenever one cowboy got into it with another over some imagined slight or other, Roger would pull the combatants aside for OTFs, where he badgered them about what had happened and how it made them feel.
On the brighter side, Fred made a great boss. He had no problem with letting women do “men’s” work. He made sure everyone had a chance to get in on the job, starting with setting up portable panels to form a corral, gathering the two hundred cow-calf pairs in that pasture and driving them into the corral on horseback.
Next, they hooked ropes to the corral panels and used the horses to drag the panels tighter, overlapping them to make an alley leading out.
The cows were more than happy to head for the opening and get free. Brenna and Joey Franklin stationed themselves on foot in the alley, letting the cows go through but turning back the calves. Travis and Steve, both skilled ropers, took positions at the exit and caught any calves that got by her and Joey.
When they stopped for lunch at midday, they had stew and hot bread served up by the hospitality crew.
A few of the men complained at the complete absence of beer. “What’s a good branding without the beer?” Dean Fogarth groused.
Trav didn’t let him get away with that. “You have enough trouble staying on your horse as it is, Fogarth. The last thing you need is a belly full of beer.”
Dean scowled and muttered that the damn horse was a goosey little bugger—and right then the big triangle chuck wagon bell that hung on one of the posts holding up the canteen started clanging.
The bell signaled their first mini challenge. They all had a choice: finish their stew or answer the challenge and get a chance to win some nice little reward.
Brenna considered the possible prizes. A dinner at the lodge, maybe, or a night in a real bed...
She went running with the rest of them—and regretted her decision as soon as she learned that the challenge was to sew buttons on a shirt.
Brenna sucked at sewing. Her mom had taught her the basics, but she’d never had much interest in getting better at it.
The wranglers passed out the shirts, the buttons and the needles and thread. Each shirt had three buttons missing. You had to replace them and you got points for speed and skill.
Brenna got all three buttons on, eventually. But the finished product was far from stellar. They were four-hole buttons and the thread that showed through was lumpy and uneven. Her tie-off should have been smooth and flat, but it was a hard ball of tangled thread. And Trav’s buttons didn’t look much better than hers.
Roberta and Steve were a whole other story. They both finished fast. You couldn’t tell the buttons they’d sewn on from the ones that had been on the shirts when they started. Brenna felt glad that one of them would surely
win.
But no. Summer won. She had the fastest time and the best-looking finished product, at least according to the judges. She laughed and fluttered her eyelashes when Rusty Boles, the judge with the biggest hat, named her the winner. For a prize, she got two hours in a luxury room at the lodge. She could take a long bath and soak the cares of the day away—or watch TV, order up something to eat from hospitality services and have a nap on a real bed.
“Sometimes life is so unfair,” Brenna muttered out of the side of her mouth.
Trav put his arm around her and nuzzled her dusty hair. She leaned into him, enjoying his attention way too much. But, hey, never-ending PDAs were a big part of their game. He nibbled her ear. “Disappointed?”
“How did you guess?”
“You’re wearing your sulky face.”
She stuck out her lower lip and sulked even harder. “I want a bath. And Roberta should have won.”
“The judges disagree.”
“The judges are such fools. And look at her.” She glared at Summer, who was whispering something in Rusty Boles’s ear. “Her eyes might pop out of her head if she bats her eyelashes any harder.”
Trav nuzzled her hair again. “Meow...”
She playfully shoved him away. “I am never catty.” At his low chuckle, she shook a finger at him. “And you’d better watch yourself.”
“Or...?”
“You never know the things that I might do.”
“Wow, Bren. I’m quaking in my boots.”
She leaned in close and pressed a kiss to his bearded jaw, her spirits lifting just from trading a few fond insults with him. “Remember,” she warned. “We share a tent, and you have to sleep sometime.”
* * *
They got half the calves branded and vaccinated that day. Trav and Steve stuck with roping, riding into the knots of milling, bawling calves, setting their ropes for a calf to step into place, then pulling the rope tight on the hind legs and dragging the animal toward the wrestlers, who flipped it and held it in position to get vaccinated, have its ear tag checked and take the brand.
The Maverick Fakes a Bride! Page 10
